YOWSA! Nice fly, and the scan is beautiful too. With the success Bob and others have been having with sinking lines for sport-sized tuna, it might even be good to leave a few without eyes. In any case, nice job palmering the bunny to produce the full bodied effect, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure that will breathe well.

Yo,
Awesome job. I love how PAge Rogers says that you can use these flies for ANY coastal gamefish. That's encouraging. Next time I'm in Vineyard Sound after Aug 1, I will let these bunnies sit longer with the occasional twitch. I think I yanked too many bunnies out of Albie jaws on that one day last year. Nice job Sully.

Very nice!! If I was a fish, I'd be drooling right now! I made up a bunch of eels (black bonito bunnies with longer tails) last year, and had pretty good luck with them after dark. Also, nice getting to meet you in person last weekend.

Nice fly! I just learned how to tie this one, except I learned to use a rabbit strip for the tail. Is that bucktail I see on the end of yours?

A trick for those interested: tie the tail (whatever the material) and flash first and then add the mono loop, pulling the tail up through the loop. This has the effect of keeping the tail suspended way up above the bend. With rabbit tail, it eliminates 100% of any tangles with the hook. Not sure what effect it would have on deer hair.

Ahh, my mistake. Sorry, the image decieved me. Maybe it's because the rabbit tail is laying against a flat surface, but I really did think that was deer tail.

I had a chance to use the bunny down in Florida, but as usual in a somewhat funky manner. I took a bottom fishing charter one day (cheap and offshore seemed to be the only action in town). While fishing for grouper, I decided to tie on a bunny stinger. Worked great on snapper and grunts (don't know the textbook name for those), so while everyone around me was burning through the cut bait and only pulling up a few grouper, I was hauling up fish after fish "on the fly."

My deep regrets to the purist fly fishermen out there. It was a one time incident and I promise to never do it again &lt;fingers crossed&gt;.

ssully et al.-I've tied this type of fly differently and had good success. For the tail I either tie some hackle in deceiver style or flat-wing style. Ken Abrams listed a fly in his first book using palmered hackle with the faltwing, and I followed that basic style but used the Rabbit instead of the hackle to ride the fly alittle deeper. It works. ronl

Yo,
I tied my 1st Bonito Bunny last night. It came out ok. But I noticed 2 things:

1. The hair on the rabbit fur falls out a lot. Anyone else notice rabbit fur shedding easily? Maybe I got some cheap stuff but I don't think so.

2. I was following the Page Rogers recipe and at the last minute, getting ready for the palmering of the last bunny strip up the shank I notice she says to use a <b>crosscut</b> strip. So I did. Wow, that really made a difference since the hair flares backward as you wrap a crosscut piece.

Terry,
It's not at all uncommon to have a fair amount of 'underfur' pull out of zonker while you are working with it. You have two choices if you have a strip that is really loaded,
- before you use the strip, just stroke it with your thumb and index finger to work the loose underfur out.
- be a bit more gentle with the strip as you are tying with it (tough to do when you are trying to palmer a section!!)

When I'm using a lot of zonker I usually end up the night with that fur airborn all around the bench and clinging to various parts of my 10 0'clock shadow..

Thanks. To be honest none. I lost my tunoid virginity though at Boneclave September 99. No bonito were around... but the albies were. [img]http://216.71.206.188/images/flytalk/Wilk.gif" border="0" align="middle">

As I mentioned in the original post this is a proven pattern around MV. Since I added the eyes and epoxied the head it looks much better.

I used a similar fly last year that incorporated maribou instead of rabbit fur. Hackle tail deceiver style with gray maribou on top white on the bottom. They sould both work about the same.